August 20

“Many of our blessings bring discomfort to us; for memory recalls the torments of fear, while foresight anticipates them. The present alone can make no man wretched.” – Seneca

A lot has been written and said about staying in the moment. A big focus of mindfulness training is staying present, here and now. There is a lot to that, letting go of the past, not worrying about the future and remaining here. We might imagine that at a certain point in life, that way of thinking is how we will maintain our ability to enjoy the last parts of our time on this planet.

And certainly, staying in the moment and focusing on the here and now is something that falls directly within our control. But it is not the only thing that remains in our control. There a couple of thought exercises that we should be engaging in daily to ensure we are making the progress we want to be making in becoming the people we want to become.

Reflection. We should take time everyday to reflect on the days events, conversations, and activities. We should find things we did well and plan to build on those and we should find things we did not do well, things we failed at and we should think of a few ways we could have handled them better. We should also think about our goals and consider how far we were able to move the needle today and how we can make a little more progress tomorrow.

Mapping. We should also take some time everyday and think about our short and long term goals. We should learn how to honestly assess our progress and determine ways to improve on our current achievement. We can also use this time to plan for contingencies, we should play out specific scenarios in our heads and plan what we would do differently to continue on our path if our situation changes.

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